


A thing of any relevance

by equestrianstatue



Series: Combat [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Relentless Sexual Powerplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 04:42:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15065363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue
Summary: “You like this,” Silver said, and he allowed himself a grin, even though he knew it would earn him Flint’s arm pressing fractionally upwards, against his throat. Not hard enough, though, to cut off his voice. “Putting me in my place.”Flint’s eyebrows raised minutely. He looked down the length of Silver’s body, at the way it slouched beneath him, sprawled against the trunk; at the rise and fall of his chest, his hands curled loosely by his hips. Glancing back up, he said, “Not as much as you do.”





	A thing of any relevance

**Author's Note:**

> Set during episode 2x07.
> 
> There is supposed to be a third part to this series, which won't be quite as structurally identical as parts one and two... but which, at my current rate, probably won't actually get written until, what, 2019?

It grew easier, day by day, to address the crew. Now and again Silver thought back almost fondly to his earliest efforts, to when his success was measured by how long he was tolerated before being knocked down. Could that have been such an absurdly short time ago? Tonight, in the meeting-house, the sea of bodies all but parted for him; they made him a stage among them on which to stand, hushed their voices, turned their faces towards him in anticipation. A hundred men who wanted to hear what he had to say. He almost missed the old days. He had liked the challenge of it.

Although he liked this, too. The men’s attention. Not their deference, not the silence that settled upon them when they listened to Flint, whether out of real reverence or the sullen pretence of it. Listening to Silver, their expressions were open, they whispered quietly and questioned loudly, they chewed their nails— but they listened nonetheless. Because they wanted to, and not because they had been told that they must.

Besides, there was challenge enough here without having to win anybody’s ear to begin with. To convince the men not only to change course once again, to head in an entirely different direction to the one they had been so precisely pointed towards this past weeks; but also to convince them, murderers and thieves to a man, that they didn’t revel in blood, violence, and chaos. To convince them that really they yearned for the embrace of civilisation— a civilisation that had already rejected them so thoroughly as to spit them out here, on this godforsaken outpost of the known world. _Captain Flint has shown you a third way._ Something inside Silver twisted, clenched, pleasurably. Captain Flint, he did not point out, was not showing anybody anything. He was sitting alone in his tent, entrusting his business to Silver, unable to fight this battle for himself.

By the time Silver was done, some of the men were already with him. Others were considering it. Even the ones who were opposed did not fight him over it openly; they muttered together, discontented, aware that they were in the minority, that Silver had become the accepted voice of the communal temperament.

He stayed a little, afterwards. It would not do to look as if his entire purpose in coming here had been to say his piece and then to leave. He took a drink with Logan and Muldoon, let the alcohol appear to loosen his tongue and the sincerity of his belief in the plan to spill out. Yes, really, he thought that Flint could pull this off, could turn the New World’s most notorious pirate-hunter into their own personal champion. Tell me, in the time you’ve sailed with this crew, have you ever seen the Captain _lose_ an argument? They laughed. Silver laughed too.

He considered staying longer. He wondered how long Flint would wait before seeking him out. Perhaps it wouldn’t be tonight— but by tomorrow morning, surely, he would have grown impatient. Silver would have liked to drag out Flint’s uncertainty, to force him to come and root him out to give his report. And yet: he knew very well, as he turned down the next drink, as he pushed himself to his feet, where he was going next.

The beach was all but deserted. At the entrance to Flint’s tent, Silver cleared his throat. Flint, writing at his desk, glanced up: as if he had not expected him, as if he had not heard his approach, as if he had not continued or even begun writing precisely with the intention of appearing to be a man with better things to do.

When Silver did not speak, Flint was forced to level at him a gaze more prolonged, and more enquiring; and when still he did not speak, to ask, “How did they take it?”

Silver leaned on the slim trunk of wood that made up one side of the shelter’s rough entrance, and folded his arms. “Well, I think,” he said. “Enough of them, at least.”

Flint exhaled through his nose, a tightly relieved release of breath. “Good.”

“Yes,” Silver said. “Now all that remains is the girl.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“By all means, Captain, I plan to.”

Flint sat back in his chair, and this time the focus of his eyes carried his full attention. He seemed almost not to blink, not to move a muscle, to direct all of his energy to the task of looking at Silver. The weight of it was rather more than Silver suspected many men could bear, but with only a little effort he managed to keep his posture and his expression intact. Casual, unintimidated.

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” Silver asked.

“What makes you think I’m going to start doing that?” Flint gave him the barest quirk of his lips, the barest flash of his teeth. “Besides, you haven’t actually told me what happened yet.”

Silver made his way further into the tent, stood before Flint at his desk, and smiled. “I appealed to their better natures.”

Flint snorted in disbelief; and then, surprised, he said, “Really?”

“I addressed them as reasonable men. No reasonable man would choose this life. I certainly didn’t. And what reasonable man, given the chance, wouldn’t give it up for something better? If he can keep his freedom, but lose the danger, lose the hardship…” Silver shrugged. “I don’t see how that argument can fail.”

“I do,” said Flint. “I wouldn’t put anything past that crew. They’ve been doing this for too long. Give them one sight of a prize, and— ” he clicked his fingers.

Silver frowned. “If you actually think this plan is going to work, which I have to assume that you do, surely you believe what I just said, too?”

Flint lifted his brows, tilted his head a little to the side. “It’s not the tack I expected you to take with the men.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t underestimate my ability to convince them.”

“Oh, I don’t.”

Silver smiled again, and tried to weigh the quality of Flint’s mood. Relieved by the news that Silver had brought him; preoccupied by the constant formation and re-formation of his plans; concerned by the uncertainty of securing the girl from the fort; tired, perhaps. Silver had expected all of these things in greater or lesser measure. But Flint’s face currently gave him very little to go on: he had a well-practised mask of disinterest, when he had prepared to use it. But that he had evidently prepared to use it now was an indicator in itself.

“So what next?” said Silver.

“We wait for the girl. And once we have her, we sail, before the crew has time to change their minds.” Flint looked back to the papers spread across his desk and picked up a pair of compasses, his dismissal of Silver implicit.

Flint’s position today had been as unsteady as Silver had ever known it: and Silver had a feeling that there was a lever, here, if one only felt around for it, that he could not in good conscience leave without pulling. So he came a little closer. He placed both hands upon Flint’s desk, leaning down, his hips shifting easily away behind him.

Flint, very obviously against his will, looked up from his map. “I’m sorry,” he said, “was there something more?”

Silver said, “Would you like there to be?”

Silver had the pleasure of watching Flint’s face spasm with a sort of surprised irritation, and of watching Flint search for an answer that would effectively close this conversation down. Feigning ignorance would mean giving Silver the opportunity to express the question a little more plainly. But turning him down would mean acknowledging the silent, heavy presence of that question throughout this interview, and indeed throughout every order Flint had given him, every prickling interaction they had steered through, these past two days. And simply telling Silver to leave would mean admitting the question unnerved him.

“No,” said Flint, eventually. “I most certainly would not.”

Silver pushed himself upright again, and shrugged. “If there’s nothing else you need, then, I’ll be going.”

He turned away, as hard as it was to turn when Flint’s eyes were trained on him, and he had even taken a step towards the curtained doorway when Flint said, “Wait.”

And so he waited; heard the shifting of Flint’s chair, his slow, measured tread as he came around the desk to where Silver stood. Turning back round once more, Silver let him advance, and let them both recognise the threat that advance carried with it: one that could no longer be really of violence, but of a kind of forced intimacy.

All the same, Silver was genuinely surprised when Flint, now in front of him, reached forward and took hold of Silver’s chin between his thumb and his curled forefinger. He moved Silver’s head from side to side, briefly, frowning. Flint studied his face with, if not interest, then scrutiny: like a man who was inspecting a tool or weapon that was suspected of some hidden defect.

Momentarily wrong-footed, Silver let him do it— and then, as suddenly as he had begun, Flint dropped his hand and let him go. The gesture was so entirely redolent of boredom, of Silver having been assessed and found wanting, that he felt a prickle of real resentment. He could not, in that moment, bear to be quite so casually dismissed.

“What is it,” he asked, “spoiled goods?”

Flint moved so easily, so quickly, that it was as if he had planned it; and perhaps, Silver thought, he had. In seconds, he had backed Silver up against the nearest tree-trunk. One arm, bent at the elbow, pinned Silver in place across his collarbone, a slight change of pressure away from resting on his windpipe.

“You don’t know when to stop pushing your luck, do you?” Flint asked.

“No,” agreed Silver. “Famously.”

Flint didn’t quite smile, but his expression was not entirely devoid of amusement. He was not at all as he had been in the man-of-war’s cabin, the last time they had been quite this close to one another. Then, Flint’s advance had been agitated; there had been some recognisable quality of disconcertion in his manner, half-violent, half-paralysed. Now, despite the force with which he had moved, and with which he was holding Silver still, he actually seemed rather calm.

“You like this,” Silver said, and he allowed himself a grin, even though he knew it would earn him Flint’s arm pressing fractionally upwards, against his throat. Not hard enough, though, to cut off his voice. “Putting me in my place.”

Flint’s eyebrows raised minutely. He looked down the length of Silver’s body, at the way it slouched beneath him, sprawled against the trunk; at the rise and fall of his chest, his hands curled loosely by his hips. Glancing back up, he said, “Not as much as you do.”

Silver didn’t bother to argue. The aura of power that Flint was so good at projecting, combined especially with a demonstration of his physical strength, aroused him, certainly. But this was all the more so because of the knowledge that it was a power fed by circumstance, by wavering tributaries that could be diverted, forded, blocked; and most importantly, by Silver himself.

After a moment, Flint made his point more succinctly by pressing his free hand briefly and with some exactitude against Silver’s cock. The material there was light and worn enough that Flint could feel, he was sure, just how hard he already was. But then it was gone.

“So what did you want to get out of this?” Flint asked.

Silver held up his hands, as far as was possible within the prison of Flint’s body. “Well, Captain, I came here for a conversation— ”

Flint quirked his lip, briefly, and shook his head. “What were you hoping I would do, when you got to this point?” He waited a moment or two for an answer, which Silver didn’t give; flicked his eyes up and down his body once again. “Were you hoping I would fuck you?”

Silver had wanted— exactly this, he supposed. This moment of precariousness, of Flint provoked into touching him. Flint likely wouldn’t believe it, but Silver genuinely did not have a specific design as to what might happen next. Although he wouldn’t be actively opposed to this particular suggestion. Not with Flint this close, his voice low and half-mocking.

Silver said, “Is that what you want?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Flint was being careful, this time. Silver supposed he should have expected nothing less. He wondered whether there might ever really be another chance to encounter Flint with his defences lowered; he had an obscure feeling that even the last time, he had only scratched the surface of whatever might be underneath the coat, the skin, the costume.

“If it’s something you need from me— ” Silver said, purely to watch Flint’s expression of disdain— _I don’t need anything from you_ — contort into a momentarily defeated frustration, as he remembered that, by his own admission, this wasn’t true.

“Well,” said Silver, when Flint didn’t respond, “you needn’t go to quite so much trouble as all that.”

Flint huffed out a small breath, almost a laugh. Then he said, “All right then,” and his hand was back at Silver’s crotch. His fingers were quick and deliberate, unbuckling Silver’s belt, opening his trousers, unconcernedly, left-handed.

In amongst everything else— the battle of it, the game of it, the danger of it— Silver was aware that he was motivated partly by a very basic desire, a very physical want, an unashamed memory of what it had been like to have Flint’s cock in his mouth and his skin under his hands. And this— Flint taking hold of _his_ cock, his body keeping Silver in place even though he dropped the arm that had been pressed to his clavicle— this might even be better. Silver had no particular reason to conceal it, and so he gasped, pleased, mouth open. He stopped thinking, just for a moment, a bright moment, as Flint pulled at him— long and slow and careful, making him shudder, making his cock twitch in Flint’s hand.

And then there was an absence of sensation: a cold lack of anything. Flint had stopped, and moved just a little backwards, away from him.

Silver, mind slowed by arousal, had begun to frown, had begun even to shape the first word of a question— _What are you— Why aren’t you—_ before his brain caught up. He had been wondering, of course, exactly why Flint was doing this, when their last encounter had, Silver thought, demonstrated that he had far more to lose by it. Even if Flint had been walking around with the same low, heady pull of want thrumming in his veins these past couple of days, it seemed unlikely that he would capitulate to it so easily. Silver had thought it far likelier that Flint might reach this point again in anger, but that was not quite what he had displayed tonight.

But now, as Silver struggled not to look quite as bereft as his cock currently felt, he understood perfectly. He had been foolish enough, earlier that evening, to unsheathe a little of his own new power, and allow Flint to see the glint of it. To remind him that Silver was entirely capable of walking away from their partnership, and of just how precarious Flint’s position would be if he were to do so. But what else could Silver have done: how could he have remained impassive when Flint, hard-eyed, stiff-jawed with unwillingness, had all but begged Silver for his help? It had been a sharp, unexpected pleasure. Silver had indulged himself. And now he was being punished for it.

Flint asked, eyebrows raised, “Will that do?”

Silver bit at his tongue. It was well-played. What would he do: would he beg? Allow Flint the indignity of the idea that Silver’s need outweighed his? Or would he be forced to claim, insanely, that yes, that would do nicely?

He looked at Flint: Flint all-seeing, all-knowing. Flint who could build whole crews, whole campaigns, whole worlds, out of little more than a few well-placed words and his own unbending determination. His self-satisfaction, his self-belief, was part of the appeal. It was what made him so very formidable.

But Flint, who looked at Silver now as though he had the very measure of him, was two steps behind. Silver thought, like a lifeline, of the gold that sat unguarded on the Florida beach; the gold that, in Flint’s mind, had ceased to exist. Today, it was Silver who decided what was and wasn’t real. It didn’t matter what happened here, under this canvas, under Flint’s hands, because Flint’s understanding of the situation was already irrelevant.

Nonetheless, it wouldn’t do to seem too immediately contrite; and besides, Silver wasn’t. So in answer to the question, he settled for something in  
between his two options, and said, “What do you fucking think?”

“I don’t know, Mr Silver,” said Flint, and now all pretence was gone: he was openly enjoying himself. “But you’re very good at helping people to understand what it is that they might think. Perhaps you could assist me here.”

“Very well,” said Silver, and he smiled, hard, combative. “Captain, I would enormously appreciate it if you could finish the job.”

“I’m not much interested in appreciation. You ought to know that by now.”

Christ, Silver thought, he wasn’t going to settle for anything less than full submission. But there was little point in half-measures at this stage; there was no way of backing out that would end any better than pushing onwards. And Silver really did want it.

“Please,” he said, allowing a hint, just a hint, of that want to break the surface. “For fuck’s sake. Please.”

This, it seemed, was good enough. Flint, with a short hum of satisfaction, slid his fingers back over Silver’s cock, wrapped his hand around it, and gave it a rough, sharp tug.

 _There is no we_ , Silver had said, earlier; spat it into the ground at Flint’s feet, testing his strength. It was true enough: but it was also true that it was Silver who had forced into existence whatever _we_ there was. Over the Urca’s schedule in Eleanor’s tavern; then on the deck of the warship, sailing for Nassau, their voices low in the night; and then in Flint’s cabin, two days past, on his knees. Wasn’t it true, then, that any _we_ was in Silver’s power to destroy, when the time came— and wasn’t that what he had done today, the moment he’d gone out to meet the launch on the beach?

So what, exactly, was this? Flint was stroking him, his thumb at the head of Silver’s cock, making him grunt, making him begin to leak into his hand; his right hand, now, his sword hand, calloused and unforgiving. But it was more than physical opportunism. It was a way of speaking to one another that, Silver supposed, they both understood. It was perfectly clear that Flint knew that sex was a way of meaning many different things, and that very few of them were quite so pleasant as affection. But many of them were just as powerful. Silver felt for a moment subsumed by it, by Flint; his smell of salt and grime and leather in Silver’s nostrils, his body so close, his hand encompassing Silver’s heated cock. He tried very hard not to drown.

It tumbled across his scattering mind, a point of interest, that Flint was unusually good at this. On New Providence, Flint’s attachment to Mrs Barlow was no secret. And at sea— well, there were captains with a reputation, and Flint wasn’t one of them. So perhaps this was a vestige of some folly of his youth, a necessity not unusual on a long voyage. Only lending a hand below deck didn’t usually involve much finesse. Didn’t mean settling into one rhythm and then pausing abruptly, deliberately, turning almost gentle, drawing out a sudden moment of frustration so unexpectedly pleasurable that Silver had to grit his teeth against it. But then, Silver supposed, perhaps there was no area of physical or mental skill that Flint had not considered it useful to master. Perhaps he had simply realised at some point how very effective a method of control sex could be.

Silver let his head fall back, the rough bark of the trunk against his hair, mouth open and panting. “Shit,” he said, as Flint, who was fucking relentless, sped up yet again; and then there was a small interlude of other fairly undignified noises.

“Will you shut the fuck up?” muttered Flint, although he didn’t slow down. Silver, who had been rather wrapped up in the specifics of what was happening immediately in front of him, only now considered quite how exposed they were— or, to be more accurate, how exposed he was. Flint had backed him into the furthest corner of the tent, but all the same, Silver could see out onto the beach from where he stood. The combined crews were still mostly in the meeting-house, and the nearest shouts of life were a fair distance away, towards the town. Nevertheless, the risk was there; but Silver reflected, somewhere through the still-rising crest of sensation, that Flint only took a risk when it was calculated.

And calculated this was, to the final moments; to the point at which Flint, undisguisedly satisfied, close enough that Silver could feel his breath on his face, asked, “Was this what you wanted, then?”

This was a final concession, Silver realised, the muscles in his stomach twitching, before he would be allowed to finish— to which the answer, unarguably, must be _yes_. But before he gave it up— mind and body both by now strung out in tight, desperate need— he just about had the capacity to consider the question for himself.

On some level, yes, evidently, obviously, it was. He took a bright, bloody-minded pleasure in drawing out Flint’s strength, in having it expended upon him, in being dragged by it into a state of indignity. And yet equally he wanted the reverse, to be the one cradling the power, doing the dismantling. It was an extraordinarily lucky discovery that these desires seemed not to be incompatible. Indeed, Silver was becoming increasingly convinced that he must work at one in order to have any chance at the other.

“Yes,” he said, anyway, teeth clenching as Flint tightened his hand, “Yes, yes— ”

He came hard, bending forward without meaning to. Flint pulled him almost unkindly through it, until at last he yielded, and let go. Silver felt wrung out in every sense; emptied, for a very short moment, of everything, thoughts included. But then the world swam back into his senses. Flint moving away; the hangings of the shelter around them shifting minutely in the warm night’s breeze; Silver’s come on the sand in front of him.

Betrayal, Silver thought, was not quite the word for what he had done to Flint and his crew, because it required a level of trust, of compatriotism, that must exist in order to be betrayed. Both he and Flint had been well aware that their partnership had been founded on necessity and opportunity. Silver had had no illusions, at any point, that Flint would not drop him the moment he ceased to be useful. And Flint must know, without a doubt, that Silver would do the same in return. He only did not realise that it had already happened.

“Do you want…?” Silver asked, gesturing loosely in Flint’s direction.

Flint’s mouth quirked into a half-smile that did not reach his eyes, and he shook his head. Silver shrugged, hands going to his open belt and trousers, and peeled himself away from the tree-trunk. It was a claim of physical superiority, that Flint could remain unmoved by all that had just happened, but it was shrewd, too. No access to any potential cracks in the armour; no chance of revealing any part of himself that he had not prepared for Silver to see.

All the same, Silver did wonder what Flint had got out of this. He was not convinced that the move had been entirely political, although he accepted that it had probably been mostly so. He considered the idea that Flint might still get himself off after Silver had been dismissed. It wasn’t inconceivable.

“If that’s everything, then,” said Silver, “believe it or not, I do have other business to attend to.”

Flint snorted, waved his hand in dismissal. Interesting, how marked the difference was from the last time this had happened: how very separate from the version of Flint who had believed himself, for however short a time, to have lost control of the situation.

“Be ready to sail,” Flint said, walking back to his chair. “Once the girl is here, we won’t waste any more time than we need to.”

Outside, on the beach, people were laughing, and there was the distant flicker of a fire being coaxed into life. There was at least a night to go, yet, before anyone was ready to sail anywhere. Silver thought absently of where he was bound after this; of whether he might be able to corner Max alone at the whorehouse, or whether he would be made to bring Bonny into their confidence. Either way, well before dawn, the power of knowledge on the island would have shifted once again, and that gold-littered beach would be tied inexorably to him, Charles Town or no.

“Good luck,” said Silver. “I hope she makes it.”

“Don’t worry,” Flint said, “she will,” and, back in his seat, he did not look up as Silver left him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you can also reblog it [on tumblr](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/175288751292/a-thing-of-any-relevance-equestrianstatue)!


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